The first comment by tutor Peter Haveland concerns the way text has been laid out.”There is a school of thought that a quote over two lines long should be indented. Italicisation is not necessary for quotations in the text”. I appreciate these comments but rather like the use of italics is identifying quoted text. Notes on indenting the text is worth attending to though as is the use of italics; note quote in this paragraph.
My introduction which consists of an introductory quote, a paragraph and another quote followed by a short sentence (this article considers the photo-essay as a form of artistic expression) is described by the tutor as “a good, concise and clear introduction.”
One of the first points I make is that photography has used groups of images from it’s early days just as the first artists from prehistoric cave culture did. Tutor Peter asks whether the use of plural photographs has “been so throughout the history of photography” and whether my next paragraph clarifies this. I don’t think it does and in fact, a lot of early photography particularly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw an attempt to give the photograph a similar kind of status to the painting rather than exploit it’s plurality. Henry Peach Robinson and P.H.Emerson are examples of photographers from the Victorian era who partially succeeded in making individual photographs works of art while in New York, Alfred Stieglitz formed the Photo-Secession movement. However, as photography became more established, a process in which the photo-essay played no small part, the value of the plural use of photographs acting together became more prominent. As Di Bello and Zamir state in their introduction to The Photobook, “Understanding how meanings are shaped by an image’s interactions with another, or its place in a group or sequence, or through its dialectical coexistence with text …”
The difference between the photo-essay and the photo-book is something that Peter suggests I might expand upon at another time.
Did technology or tradition and its’ reliance on the wood cut slow down the development of photographic processes in the late nineteenth century asks Peter? It seems likely that photographic technology might have evolved faster if it was not for an inbuilt reliance on traditional modes of production such as the wood cut yet for photography to evolve, there needed to be a change in the general understanding of photography and it’s differences rather than similarities to the painting.
I make the point that the advent of the much lighter, more manageable 35mm camera was influential in the growth of the photo-essay yet did not make the point that plate cameras still continued to be used for Press work; Peter mentions the Speed Graphic while there was also the twin lens reflex camera which like the Speed Graphic continued to be used into the 1960’s.
In the next couple of paragraphs, I write about early magazines that supported the photo-essay, the Magnum agency and the popularity of the photo-essay today.
I start to discuss the make up of a photo essay; Peter reckons this is a subject that could be enlarged upon elsewhere; it lacks clarity being dealt with in such a concise way. In fact, I have blogged about my experience of a workshop concerning the photo-essay and photo book.
When I write that “The ability to tell a story is something that photographers need to develop” Peter rightly questions my generalisation. Not all photographers need to be versed in creating narrative (a portrait photographer for example) yet it seems to be an important skill since even the portrait photographer might want to create a sequence of photographs for his clientele. The intention of the original sentence was to emphasise the importance of storytelling in photography. A number of photographers such as course author Michael Freeman like to refer to themselves as story tellers.
In regards to my following comment, “To create such a complex structure, it helps to recognise certain kinds of image such as an opener, a closer view, a key shot and a high impact image” Peter asks whether I “think it is always applicable to an essay tending more to fine art than journalism?” This is another interesting point. I took the view I have given here from a reading of Michael Freeman’s “The Photographers Story” and it does rather tend towards photojournalism rather than art since in the latter, there may be no story at all merely a theme which might of course occasionally be the case in photojournalism too. Narrative in photography might not be very clear without captions or text of some kind.
There is evidently a marked difference between the photo-essay and the photo-book; they might collude to be almost identical yet photo-books tend to be less mainstream than photo-essays. Hence, artistic expression may play a greater part in the photo book! However, the phonebook often contains a photo essay albeit in a somewhat different way to the magazines and other publications that might carry a photo essay; this is likely to be because photojournalistic narratives tend to be shorter and need to use more direct images that those requiring contemplation which readers may not have time for.
Peter notes a number of good points; the last of these is the fact that Parvati Nair came to photography as a cultural historian interested in the work of Sebastio Salgado because of the subject matter rather than artistry.
At the end of the essay, I quote Harold Evans from his well-known book Pictures on a Page. Peter says I should put a date to this quote! It is however difficult to ascertain when it was made as the book has been republished a number of times over the years.
My Harvard referencing is in place but I have not got the order right in the Bibliography; it should be Author, Date, Title, City, Publisher.
Generally speaking, my essay seems to have dealt with a number of issues that might be expanded upon or even pursued as lines of enquiry. The photobook is an example of a medium that is receiving a lot of attention nowadays thanks in part to Gerry Badger and Martin Parr whose 3 volume history of the photobook is part of larger movement to understand a form of expression that has been largely ignored by photo historians.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Various, 2011, “The Photobook: From Talbot to Ruscha and Beyond”, London New York ,I.B.Tauris
Progressing With Digital Photography 